


Save me, Captain

by aftershocks



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-20
Updated: 2012-06-20
Packaged: 2017-11-08 04:50:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/439330
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aftershocks/pseuds/aftershocks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Drabble-- Ignored by his father, Tony finds companionship and comfort in some old newsreels.  Teenage Tony/ accepted (non-au) timeline.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Save me, Captain

Tony Stark was far from being his father’s biggest fan. The media loved him and Tony’s mother loved him, and not without reason: besides being the primary defender of the free world, Howard Stark sent 12 kids to engineering school each year and had helped defeat the Nazis. In fact the one fault Tony could find with his father was that in 15 years, he had never once bothered to sit down and talk to his only son for more than five minutes at a stretch.  
Tony was aware, of course, that his father’s time was in high demand. As CEO of Stark Industries and the primary defense contractor for the United States Military, he juggled dozens of social events and weapons demonstrations. He did, however, have free time; two or three hour chunks stolen here and there for dinner and then an immediate retreat down to his workshop to build the next big thing in… in God knows what, Tony wasn’t told, no one was told. It was clearly Howard’s pet project; Tony had hacked into the Stark Industries mainframe five times and found nothing but fighter jets and guns and the occasional piece of hydroponic tech to keep the human rights activists satisfied. Whatever it was, his father wasn’t storing it on the company server, and the security at home was too tight even for Tony, so he stayed in the dark.  
Tony didn’t mind that his father was keeping secrets. He had several of his own tucked beneath his outrageously large bed, magazines he was sure his parents would frown at and a negative pregnancy test among them, and so he understood a desire for privacy and secrecy. But what he did not understand was his father’s absence. If you weren’t going to pay attention to a kid, why the hell would you have one? Howard didn’t even notice him when he did something impressive; when Tony was 6, he had built his first engine with the help of a few Stark Industries interns and rushed downstairs to share, only to find daddy in his workshop, too busy to talk. And there he had remained ever since, cloistered away. Tony was pretty sure that if Obadiah hadn’t been around to encourage him and to pressure him fill out the application for MIT, he would have gone mad out of loneliness and boredom. Just three more months in the hellhole, and then classes started and he was free. Christ, maybe someone at MIT would listen.  
Usually Obadiah was enough. But not today. Tony had an idea, a big idea, and Howard needed to hear it. Not because Tony was lonely or in need of a father figure, but because he would not have this project stuck in R&D like so many things had been. Howard got things done. He was dynamic. He was everything Tony wanted to be.

Tony stood before the heavy oak door of his father’s home office for a moment more, steadying himself with deep breaths. This was big, maybe big enough to get his father’s attention. He knocked.

“Dad?”

“I’m busy, Anthony.”

Tony suppressed the urge to correct him. Tony. My name is Tony. But a hundred reiterations had not helped and this one would not either, nor would it win him admittance or attention.

“Dad, this’ll only take a—”

The door opened. The man who stood before him was tall, broad-shouldered, and wore a jacket decorated with so many medals that Tony could barely distinguish the olive-green material beneath. Army, then. Tony was used to the military men that stomped through his father’s life, demanding bigger guns and more destructive bombs. This one didn’t look any different, decorated and high-ranking, but if Tony craned his head slightly, he could see that the man had been poured a glass of his father’s best Scotch.

Contractors got the second-grade stuff. Office stuff. 

Speaking of, contractors didn’t come home. It was a rule. Howard valued his privacy, and dragging every general this side of the Mississippi into his home office was the best way to compromise that privacy. Yet here he was, an Army General in their home. In Tony’s home.

Tony found his voice. “Dad, what the hell is—”

His father spoke from behind the desk.

“I told you. I’m busy.” Howard caught sight of the papers clutched in Tony’s hand, the scribbled calculations and sketches. “Your calculus homework can wait. General.”  
Howard Stark gave a curt nod and the door closed in Tony’s face.

Tony stood shell-shocked and fuming for a moment. Calculus homework? He hadn’t needed help with calculus since he was ten years old, and that he had gotten from the interns at Stark Industries. They had been the ones to teach him differential equations, not his father. That’s how things had always gone.

“Fuck you too, dad.” And fuck your secret project. If Tony was any braver, he might have marched into the office and said it to his face. As it was, he muttered it under his breath as he fled down the hall.

Tony ended up where he always did when Howard decided he was unimportant, in the spare room off the kitchen, a cramped and dusty space filled with old science projects (a hard drive, several disks of software, a model of a wind turbine) and boxes of film canisters. There was also a projector, sitting several feet away from the far wall.

Tony glanced over his equations and sketches in an attempt to make himself feel better. What he saw there was a justification for his father’s disappointment.

“Stupid idea, Tony,” he murmured. There was no reason at all to revisit the arc reactor. It wasn’t a strong enough or efficient enough source of energy to be a viable alternative to coal, especially not on a smaller scale. He had thought maybe, if he changed the core to palladium and… but no. If there was a way to make the arc reactor cost-effective, his father would have found it. Of course he would have.

Tony shoved the sketches into the nearest box. His fingers found the edge of one of the film canisters, and he pulled it out, curious. It took him a minute to decipher the messy handwriting on the label, but once he had, curiosity was replaced with familiarity and a strange sense of calm. 

Tony opened the canister and loaded the film. The wall was bathed in light, and then numbers counting down, and then… black and white footage of a man wearing stars and stripes, reading patriotic words off the back of a wooden shield while girls danced around him.

Tony lost himself in the old footage, whispering words of warning when an actor dressed as Hitler came up behind the line of showgirls and cheering when the star-spangled man punched him in the face. The footage cut out and an official-looking seal wavered on screen before the room went dark again. Tony fumbled in the box and loaded another reel. 

This one was different. There was no dancing and no show girls. Instead, the camera panned over a military funeral, a somber affair involving a white coffin and 21 guns. The voiceover told the story of a patriot, dead for his country. Tony didn’t really listen. The newscaster was spinning lies anyway, pretty falsities about an average citizen rising up against the Third Reich. Tony knew the real story of the man that they said was in the coffin-- he was not there, and he was far from average. So instead of listening to the propaganda, Tony kept his eyes fixed on the screen and let his mind wander, over his father’s failures and his own and over how disgustingly wonderful the star-spangled weirdo from the newsreels had been. How heroic.  
The video came to an end. Tony sat and stared at the wall for a moment, then picked himself up and left the tiny room. Howard Stark did not have time for him, but once, so many years ago, he had made a man that Tony could look up to, a replacement. And for that, Tony hated him a little bit less.


End file.
